Ästhetik des Performativen

Since at least the 1960’s contemporary works of art can no longer be classified under traditional aesthetic genres. Rather than creating “works”, artists increasingly initiate events, whose realisation suspends the old aesthetic dichotomy of subject and object, of content and presentation. To elucidate this development, in her groundbreaking study Erika Fischer-Lichte develops an Aesthetics of Performance, which puts the spotlight on the concept of performance. This includes the characteristics resulting from the physical proximity of actors and audience, the performative presentation of materiality as well as the emergence of meaning, and leads to a definition of the performance as event. The suspension of the distinction between Art and Life, which more recent forms of expression aim to achieve, is articulated aesthetically here.

Performative Aesthetics has been published by Šahinpašić, Sarajevo in a Bosnian translation by Sulejman Bosto with the title “Estetika performativne umjetnosti”.